


Appraisal

by sweetsnow73



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Reader Is Not Frisk, Stephen Universe AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 07:56:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6946522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetsnow73/pseuds/sweetsnow73
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>AU’s where the points don’t matter and the rules are made up. I had an idea and I just went with but hopefully it works?</p>
    </blockquote>





	Appraisal

**Author's Note:**

> AU’s where the points don’t matter and the rules are made up. I had an idea and I just went with but hopefully it works?

Pink Diamond keeps looking at you.

Of all the multitude of decadences’ in the grand hall to hold his attention, you’ve noticed his eyes wander your way more than once. You, a low ranked Spinel, have the attention of a diamond. You always make sure to look away first. A Diamond must always have control. 

It didn't make sense to you. You were master of no art, an apprentice of embroidery, helper to your master and errand hand. You spent your days running around the town making deliveries. Pink Diamond should be looking for other, more talented gems. Like the others around you in the hall. 

In fact you felt plain compared to the highly decorated gems around you. Higher ranking, robed in fine cloth and you simply didn’t fit. 

And yet. 

He still looks at you. From across the room, his hauntingly deep pink eyes found you.

Not the Zircon at his side, not the Topaz dancers nor the Poudretteite singers. 

You considered your options. Balancing the way you felt awkward and out of place with the fact that a pearl had been sent to invite you personally. 

You couldn’t leave out right, but you could step outside. To the garden, which was filled with alien plants and art work. Hopefully the air would help. 

You felt a fear inside. He could have you crushed. Shattered. Pulverized into a fine dust to use as eye shadow. He was a diamond and his birth right to do as he pleases. But what else could a Diamond want from you? 

You were too distracted by these morbid thoughts that you didn’t notice the hem of your robes get snagged until it was too late. 

Surely this strange plant couldn’t hurt you. But if you hurt the plant it could get you killed. A more careless soul would simply tug themselves free, plant be damned but Pink Diamond would notice.

He noticed his beautiful things.

And the plant was beautiful. 

You glance around. The garden was mostly empty. Distant chatter but no one terribly near. You bend down and dive your hands into the foreign shrubbery. If luck was on your side you could save face. 

The cloth and ribbon of your robes were tangled at multiple points. You tried not to think that the plant had grabbed you on purpose. You needed to be quick, lest you are noticed for being gone too long.

“Oh my, what a pretty bloom you are.” The voice was amused but you felt sick.

Hands with familiar dark pink colored nails reach and free the last stubborn ribbon from the plant. You look up to see Pink Diamond, he’s smiling. 

He was, despite the fear and apprehension shading your impressions, a lovely stone to behold.

The other diamonds were diamond cut but in true Pink Diamond fashion, he was a heart cut. His own robes and ribbons were delicate looking, frivolous, every inch screamed to you that he was far beyond your rank.

You look down, as is expected.

But he tisks at this.

“Darling Spinel, perhaps you could smile for me?”

He’s teasing, maybe. Not like you spent a great deal of time around him to notice. 

You have to obey. You think of a funny joke someone told you. Kunzite, your fellow student, was always rather humerous. 

You pretend to have confidence and smile for him. 

He gently touches your face.

“Absolutely gorgeous.”

…

  
He notices beautiful things. In every form possible, his calling is to collect life's beauty.  He was, in his dramatic way, drawn to you. He finds your smile to be the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

But you cannot stand with a Diamond. Not in public, only in his secret halls and chambers. 

Always secret.

Instead of being disillusioned at your words, as you are no poet, he cannot help but want to be closer. Whispers are the sound of your time together but it seems to last eons. 

Shadows never seemed more alive, songs never sweeter. It was new, it was something decadent. 

He never bores of you, of holding your gem hand. He treats you delicately like the flowers in his gardens. 

He wanted you to always smile, to never want.

You didn’t, you felt wonderful.

…

But all things end. 

You didn’t know what happened.

You had been on the way to deliver some orders, the cloth carefully wrapped and in your bag, when someone attacked. You were thinking of other things, blocking out the chatter of merchants and focusing on getting done early as possible. 

You sustained significant damage, it was efficient. You felt pain and then nothing. 

_Regeneration._

You were everything and nothing, everywhere and nowhere. You had not been crushed, your core information and memories remained.

You passed through the fabric of yourself. Over and over. Every time a little bit more of you felt right. The kaleidoscope of yourself was a comfort as you tried to pull yourself together. 

The damage had been bad.

You had time to wonder, why.

Who.

It seemed as if you had been found out. Out of step. Out of place in society.

It was your punishment.

You feared for yourself but also for Pink Diamond.

He couldn’t be shattered. This gave you some peace.

If you regenerated you might be attacked again. And again. A cycle unending.

So you waited. And waited. Your captures would tire of your refusal to participate in their games and they would shatter you.

For a long time that was the goal. The inevitable. 

But it never came.

 

_The distant planet was overflowing with life but Pink Diamond felt empty._

_Normally his nature would have made him in awe of this world. Of all the strange things he’s never seen before._

_But he was tired._

_Tired from the uprising, the suffering, the fear, the fighting. Then tired from the running._

_He waited. For word, for them. On this distant life bearing planet that he had been able to hide on, the Spinel stone is the only thing he keeps with him._

_He’s waited so long. He’ll wait as long as he has to._

_Nothing was beautiful without their smile._

_And he needed beautiful things._

_…_

_He watches another sun rise on the strange horizon with disinterest. But he thinks Spinel would like to see it when they return._

_He takes Spinel to the water falls._

_To the animals, to the cliffs, to the blooms._

_He knows they’ll like it when they come back. When they come back, he believes he’ll finally see something of worth here._

_…_

  
_Spinel shimmers, shakes, glows._

_He feels scared. Not since the other Diamonds had knocked his home to rubble had he been this scared._

_Slowly a shape emerges._

_Spinel could hate him. His affections had hurt them, painted a target on them._

_For a while he thought they were staying away on purpose. But they were not a cruel germ. He concluded that they were afraid to come forth. It hurt him to realize that. He had let them down, he had left them vulnerable._

_They had stayed away too long, unsure how to have a physical form again. They stumbled but he held them._

_He found the act of holding them soothing. An ache relieved._

_It was beautiful. And if this was all the beauty he could have now, he would be satisfied._


End file.
